OTT Series 2019 - OTT live-streaming - July 2019 - Digital TV Europe
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July 2019
Part 3
OTT live-
streaming
Multiscreen
& OTT Series 2019
Multiscreen & OTT 2019 > OTT live-streaming Digital TV Europe
July 2019
Kicking and
streaming
Live streaming, including of major sports events, is becoming increasingly popular,
but the technical challenges of delivering a high-quality service at scale remain
considerable. Anna Tobin reports.
OTT providers have been streaming
live content for years now, but
more often than not, the experience has been
quality, claims Steve Miller-Jones, VP product
strategy at Limelight Networks. “Certainly,
with VOD content and most modern large
content libraries, and while picture quality can
still be high, the overall quality of experience
of the event, not just the video, is where the
– frankly – bad. and small form-factor screens, OTT video focus is today.
With audiences increasingly expecting live quality can be indistinguishable from “Reducing and removing rebuffering
streaming quality to match the highest live broadcast picture quality, and where linear issues while watching the streams, while
broadcast quality, there is growing pressure channels have not invested in or completed maintaining high bitrates throughout the
on OTT providers to deliver. Live OTT content digital transformation projects yet, will be event, regardless of where the user is and what
is known for buffering, latency and system exceeding it already,” he says. device they are watching on, are critical issues
crashes. Will it ever literally get up to speed? It’s when OTT goes live, however, that to solve in order to maintain user satisfaction
From a picture quality perspective, it is Miller-Jones admits that its quality can take with OTT services.”
highly likely that the quality of OTT video is a hit. “Live events pose different challenges These glitches need to be ironed out,
already as good as, if not better than, broadcast to the OTT delivery workflows than VOD because OTT is increasingly finding its place
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2
Digital TV Europe Multiscreen & OTT 2019 > OTT live-streaming
July 2019
Working for Discovery, Europe’s second The biggest challenge for broadcasters is
largest broadcaster, across all platforms and extending the capability to provide content
overseeing Eurosport Player, the only Europe- in an IP environment, alongside having to
wide sport streaming service, Gordon Castle, create a means of offering the streaming
senior VP, technology and operations at service to consumers, says Tim Pearson,
Eurosport, is uniquely placed to understand all senior director, product marketing at Nagra.
the challenges faced by both broadcasters and “For example, they may need to create an app
OTT operators. He says that multi-platform through which to present the content, which
production and distribution brings additional may have to be replicated onto many device
layers of complexity, given the significant types,” he says. “Equally, piracy forms a key
variations between linear broadcast and OTT. concern for streaming broadcasting alongside
“From the consumer viewpoint, some requirements for device authentication and
audiences are transitioning to streaming secure session management, to ensure that
with similar viewer expectations, but more only those paying a subscription have access
widely streaming audiences expect a different to the service.”
experience. This means simply sending out Broadcasters have several options if they
the same content on both types of service is want to address multiscreen, adds Nouvel.
not appropriate,” he says. “At Eurosport, we “One approach is to set up a pure OTT
meet this challenge by having one unified service relying on a CDN service provider,
team managing the content and delivery dedicated to multiscreen. The drawbacks are
requirements for both linear and digital. We that broadcasters have no control over the
are able to plan and tailor the experiences quality of experience, incur expensive CDN
we offer by audience and the screen they’re costs, with high volumes related to the usage
choosing to watch.” of unicast even for live channels, and there
are two different setups for main screen and
mobile screen delivery,” she says. “Another
Moving into OTT method that broadcasters can take is to rely
on the partnerships with network operators,
Traditional broadcasters are keen to get a and possibly implement multicast ABR
foothold in the OTT market so that they can for live, with a local cache in the network.
offer the best of both worlds. However, doing The benefits are improved QoE, along with
so requires substantial investment. controlled costs thanks to multicast ABR and
It’s all about scale, says Thierry Fautier, local caching. Ideally, broadcasters should try
VP of video strategy at Harmonic. “First, to mix local caches with a CDNaaS in order
broadcasters need to deploy technology that to maximise availability. Finally, satellite
allows them to stream live content at scale,” operators can directly implement multicast
he explains. “Next, they need to deploy their ABR down to home STBs and have a single
on the main living room TV, not just second app across multiple devices, including phones solution to address all screens. VOD use cases
screens. Nivedita Nouvel, VP of marketing at – HLS and Android – tablets, web browsers can be handled by pushing some content in
Broadpeak highlights the challenge: “If the – Edge, Chrome, Safari, Firefox – connected the local STB.”
industry wants to mutualise investments and TVs and game consoles. This is a lot of work, The technical obstacles are not the only
have one solution that fits all screens, the first and they also need to keep it profitable.” problems that broadcasters need to overcome
step is defining ‘broadcast quality’,” she says. With traditional DTH subscribers when creating an OTT channel, says Ian
“Broadcast quality encompasses providing a now increasingly moving over to OTT, Munford, director of product marketing and
fixed video quality, i.e. a single bitrate for all, satellite operators are particularly keen to enablement, media, EMEA at Akamai. “As
with a quality that depends on the channels, infiltrate the space, says Antonio Corrado, each country is uniquely different in terms
from SD to 4K with UHD and HDR; CEO of streaming technology specialist of its internet infrastructure and regulatory
continuity of service, with no rebuffering; and MainStreaming. environment, these challenges can vary
low latency, below 5s.” “The demand to move content from greatly from country to country,” he explains.
Nouvel continues: “For live OTT services, satellite to online is increasing rapidly as the “Moreover, broadcasters in Europe operate
the adaptive bitrate and hence the video cost drops and quality rises. This is what across a variety of different rights holdings
quality depends on the state of the networks, we’ve been helping Sky with in Italy, as they and business models be that ad funded,
i.e. backbone and local. An OTT service can push to stream video with the best quality licence funded or pay TV, which also introduce
be considered as equivalent to broadcast if of experience to their subscribers with their challenges for their streaming services and, in
the higher profiles are available and can be existing offering, as well as with new services,” many cases, it is these commercial challenges
reached thanks to an optimised network.” he says. which present the biggest hurdles.”
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3
Multiscreen & OTT 2019 > OTT live-streaming Digital TV Europe
July 2019
Eurosport player covers over 70 countries
and is accessible via apps and the web
Added to all of these obstacles standing in
the way of perfect live OTT delivery, there are
also problems that the OTT provider cannot
control: the size of the pipe transporting the
content to the consumer and whether the
device is optimised to receive high quality
content.
Surges in demand
It is sudden unexpected surges in demand
for live content, such as the recent surprise
success of the Women’s Football World Cup,
that puts undue strain on OTT services, half time breaks and the final five minutes. Fautier. “Multi-format is mostly a content
and means that operators have to scale up “These peaks in demand require an preparation and a player issue. To optimise
bandwidth rapidly. operator’s platform to have the necessary the delivery cost, you need to encode into a
Internet bandwidth capacity, the penetration network and peak-load capacity in key areas, multi-bitrate TS format, which is fed to an
rates of global high-speed mobile devices such as authentication, authorisation, licence origin server that will make the live content
and delivery optimisation, all come into play delivery and CDN playout.” available in multiple delivery formats (i.e.,
when having to scale up at speed, but these Managed networks are the answer to HLS and DASH). But you also need to
challenges are all being tackled by technology, scaling live OTT, reiterates Fautier. “Today, protect the content using a DRM technology,
says Castle. “While these are challenges the the scaling is done either by increasing the which starts to complicate matters, as each
industry has to overcome today, the growth CDN capacity, therefore the cost, or putting format can have a different DRM. Today
of internet connectivity and the evolution of edge caches in the ISP network, to reduce cost there are three major DRM technologies:
associated technology is continuing to enable and increase QoE,” he says. “One other way Apple FairPlay, Google Widevine and
the expansion of delivery via OTT services. to scale live OTT is to carry the traffic across Microsoft PlayReady, which can be used with
The roll out of 5G and future advancements multicast lanes used today in IPTV. Think, for each delivery format. With CMAF (Common
to come should only help overcome such example, about the BBC renting a fast lane Media Application Format), we now have a
obstacles in the future,” he says. to BT and delivering its iPlayer to the home single file format that can be encrypted with
Planning is key to dealing with any though a gateway managed by BT, which will the Common Encryption (CENC) and two
unexpected demand loads, says Munford. convert it locally to unicast. This might have encryption schemes CBC (for HLS) and CTR
“Our experience in delivering large sporting seemed like a science-fiction model a few (for DASH). However, as some players can
events shows that careful scenario planning years back, but it’s getting more and more only decrypt one encryption scheme, you still
and robust testing can ensure any event can be attention. To be successful, this will require a have to store two copies in the CDN when
delivered,” he says. “At this year’s IPL cricket business relationship between OTT providers content is encrypted. We think over time
final, we delivered more than 18 million and ISPs. It might take time to establish, but there will be convergence, on new players, to
concurrent streams to a highly demanding it could be a simple and cost-effective way to one single encryption format (CBCS), as the
audience and this was only achieved through scale live OTT.” three DRM families have announced CBCS
close collaboration and planning. support for their new release.”
“We always encourage our customers to
thoroughly test the entire technical workflow Playing to multiple formats
with a service that will emulate exact audience Keeping watch
peaks, the audience or fan location and with To further complicate things, to achieve
the ability to dynamically control testing maximum success, OTT content needs to be Being proactive and monitoring the OTT
parameters. This will help identify any issues playable in multiple formats. To accommodate user experience is crucial to being able to spot
across the technical workflow, including this, OTT providers have had to become adept and if possible fix problems before the user
delivery.” at managing transitions between multiple bit- becomes aware of them.
Typically, in a major sports event there are a rates and multiple formats. “Critical metrics include video re-buffer
number of key points during the match where “Multi-rate is a well-mastered technology, rate, rate of error and bitrate sustained during
demand surges. Being aware of this is vital for both on the server and client side. What playback,” says Miller-Jones. “In addition to
planning, points out Pearson. “Five minutes is still a work in progress is the client this, metrics from the player are able to help
before the start, if there is a goal or incident, behaviour when the bitrate gets scarce,” says broadcasters understand how successful their
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4
Q&A: Mikael Dahlgren, Agama Technologies
Mikael Dahlgren, CEO of Agama Technologies, talks about recent key developments in streaming, the importance of targeted
advertising and what service providers need to put in place to ensure optimal service quality.
What are the key developments that you see taking place in the OTT operators in cooperation with content owners.
streaming arena? For ads to be correctly played to subscribers, ad insertion requires
OTT services are growing and, in many cases, now complementing time critical signaling. Errors on the frame level can cause both visual
existing pay TV services. As the number of subscribers to these OTT artefacts and lost ad impressions, causing loss of revenue and leading to
platforms grows, customer expectations for service quality and user poor customer experience. The Agama ad insertion assurance offering
experience rise too. has the monitoring, validation and visibility needed to assure ad insert
The OTT business is quickly evolving to take advantage of the new services for both multicast and OTT, and to ensure an excellent customer
possibilities that the technology enables. Sports content on OTT experience.
platforms, for example, is driving consumption of premium content
on the big screen. Technologies such as adaptive bitrate streaming are What do service providers need to put in place in order to assure
being used in all forms of video delivery to enable service flexibility and optimal service quality and meet or exceed customer expectations?
coverage. TV Everywhere extensions and virtual cable rollouts are two Customer centricity has been a hot topic for years, and for good reason:
examples of this. understanding customer experience and customer behaviour forms the
In this fast-moving environment, we believe agility will be a key basis for building and evolving offerings that excel and exceed customer
differentiator. To evolve and enhance the customer experience, while expectations.
remaining cost-effective, solutions must provide transparency and the Creating successful video services requires compelling content, an
right insights to support the service provider in both day-to-day and optimised user experience, efficient customer service and, of course, a
strategic decision making. competitive price. To succeed in all of these dimensions, solutions and
In the OTT world, the customer experience is getting more unique – processes need to work across silos and teams.
each unicast session is sent from the network edge and consumed on With the solutions and processes in place to provide real-time insights
any of a multitude of different apps and devices. This makes it critical to across the complete service-delivery chain, from head-end to subscriber,
use every single subscriber interaction to understand how the service is service providers have the foundations to provide excellent services in a
used and how it performs. cost-effective way.
This, of course, will generate huge volumes of raw data – on the scale At Agama, we believe that to assure service quality and to really
of petabytes. To create relevant and actionable insights, the right metrics understand how the customer is experiencing and using the service, the
and the right analytics must be used for each use case. Managing video best approach is a unified end-to-end assurance solution that covers
latency, targeted advertising and optimising encoding, for instance, all the entire service delivery in real-time with in-depth KPIs and metrics,
need different analytics approaches. from encoding and packaging, through CDNs and the ISP, to STBs, apps
and devices. This provides superior results compared to fragmented and
Targeted advertising is becoming more and more important. What siloed analytics systems based on limited metrics.
can Agama do to assure that the ad insertion works correctly?
Agama has been active in the ad insertion domain for years. We see Agama will be presenting its unified solution for monitoring, analytics and
that targeted advertising is increasingly seen as an important additional visualisation at IBC2019, stand 5.B72. Visit the Agama team to see a demo
revenue stream, not only for broadcasters, but also for telcos and cable and to discuss joint projects. For more information, visit www.agama.tv
Multiscreen & OTT 2019 > OTT live-streaming Digital TV Europe
July 2019
content is, with metrics like viewing time,
drop-off rate and drop-off time being critical
“If the industry wants to mutualise
to understanding ROI on content and rights
investments.” investments and have one solution that
fits all screens, the first step is defining
Authenticating sign in ‘broadcast quality’.”
Nivedita Nouvel, Broadpeak
For live OTT providers keeping track of who
is using their services is vital to maximising key to ensuring a smooth customer journey mature rapidly, which is something we’re
advertising and subscription revenues and and experience,” she says. “In Europe, monitoring closely.”
stopping piracy. additional considerations have been added Adapted bitrate technologies are great tools
“Increasingly the role of single-sign- by EU-portability and GDPR rules, but for simplifying personalised ad insertion for
on is addressing service authentication bring significant advantages with additional OTT, adds Nouvel. “There’s no longer a need
challenges,” explains Pearson. “Other such viewing opportunities and protections for to perform complex splicing at the video
challenges exist with late registration for users.” level; content insertion and replacement can
PPV content, an example being where a live be handled through manifest manipulation.
PPV sports event is due to start shortly and The benefit of a server-side solution over a
new subscribers register to watch within the Slipping in the ads player-side system is that the ad insertion is
final few minutes before the game. Business seamless,” she says.
rules have to be set to ensure the need to OTT is particularly well suited to “Ad blockers cannot identify the
validate and collect payment is matched personalised ads and so this is one area that specificity of the ad and hence cannot block
with the viewer’s immediate requirement to most OTT providers are intent on tapping, it, since it is served in the same session as
watch the content.” particularly where they are offering content the original content. For live channels, the
To effectively authenticate viewers in a for free. usage of SCTE-35 and VAST technologies
sport environment, you must be able to “Our starting point is always the enable triggers to be added in the stream
manage concurrency peaks during the live consumer,” says Goulding. “Advertising has and used in a timely manner.”
event, says Liz Goulding, VP of product at to be personally relevant and meaningful, Server-side ad insertion (SSAI) is the
Eurosport Digital. delivered at the right time and supportive to winning architecture for serving ads to OTT
“Building scale is essential, she says. “The the customer experience. We are seeing the content, agrees Fautier.
ability to scale during these time periods is technology around dynamic ad insertion “With SSAI solutions, all ads are ingested
and transcoded to typically match the bitrates
and resolutions of the content. Content
and ads are stitched together, in a frame-
accurate way that guarantees the best QoE
for end users,” he says. “No rebuffering,
black screens waiting for the ad response,
or player swaps during ad breaks to support
exotic ad video codecs exist. These are all
problems that can still be seen today with
legacy methods of inserting ads at the client.
Scalability can still be an issue, especially for
popular live events. ADS can be overflowed
by ad requests, which could cause the ADS to
respond too late. Of course, prefetching ads
is an option, but over time, we expect native
cloud technologies to help ADS scale at will.”
With revenue streams into OTT
increasing and the technology behind it and
receiving it improving rapidly, the future of
live OTT streaming is looking bright.
If the conditions are ideal, in some
instances, live OTT content will surpass
broadcast quality. Getting those conditions
right, however, is not easy and often out of
the OTT operator’s control. l
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